A Man You Can Count On

Why do good people do bad things? And why can't--won't--don't--our clergypeople stop them? Kenneth Lonergan's new film, "You Can Count on Me," gives a touching, sometimes uncomfortable look into one family's struggle with the first question, while leaving the religious among us to ponder the second.

For a movie made by a man who calls himself an atheist, "You Can Count on Me" is full of church and contains the most accurate screen portrayal of a man of the cloth--at least a mainline, liberal minister like myself--in recent memory. And not just accurate, but so far to the front of Lonergan's mind that he plays the minister himself.

"You Can Count on Me" is a slice-of-life story, with all the pathos and troubled (and troublesome) characters of a good country song. After the credits roll against the backdrop of a church steeple, the camera settles on a boy and girl sitting in a pew at their parents' memorial service. Years later, the brother, Terry (Mark Ruffalo), now a pot-smoking wanderer, arrives in his hometown, defensive and edgy, to borrow money from his well-adjusted sister, Sammy (Laura Linney), now a single mom living in the old family home, with a good job at the bank. Sammy's solidity is revealed to have some holes: She's got serious issues of her own about sex, and her emotions run between elation and guilt as she commits adultery throughout the movie.

To help them deal with their respective crises, Terry and Sammy each have a short encounter with the pastor at Sammy's church. First, Sammy invites the minister over to the house to help straighten Terry out, and later goes to him herself, trying to sort out her man trouble.

In both encounters, the minister's manner is what has been frequently described to me as a distinctly "unpriestly." Priests judge. Priests condemn. Priests put dogma before the people's lives. Hollywood tends to reinforce this priestly profile. The culture wars have turned the standard-issue Hollywood clergyman from a kindly, consoling irrelevancy in the Barry Fitzgerald mode to a right-wing busybody who uses Jesus to hide his own hang-ups. At my screening of "You Can Count on Me," it took a barely perceptible eye roll on Terry's part to get the audience hooting with laughter at the priest's temerity in showing up at the house.

Terry tells the minister he thinks religion is "fairy tales" and says he no longer "believes." The minister, seemingly unconcerned with the specificities of belief, counters by asking an apparently heartfelt question, and one that underlies the principle of ministry: "Do you think your life matters? Not in relation to God or religion or some other term you object to, but do you feel your life is important in the scheme of things?" The scene ends with little resolved, but with Terry's palpable irritation and confusion at this line of questioning.

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